Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

the future of storytelling

awesome news, jeremy! thanks for sharing (:

i'm part cherokee, all about it. my commitment is much higher than my blood-count

best of luck in business, will see about coming to visit sometime. let me know if i can help in any way...

#redpower
 
Paul -we might be coming to a reservation in the US sooner than you think!

Our official launch is in Norway House March 7th, home to 8,000+ Cree. We will be showing 4 different movies over the 3 day period. I can't say which first-run Hollywood features yet but our audience will be able to join the rest of the world through the storytelling of cinema on the grandest scale. The following weekend we will be in northern Saskatchewan, potentially with more new releases.

We're actually in LA for a Canadian Consulate reception celebrating CDN talent in Cali and we're meeting a ton of people to roll Bandwidth out in a meaningful way in the US before the end of 2014. It's actually pretty amazing how wealthy the Native community is on the US side of the border. There are some astute bands in Canada as well; we're just starting to meet some of them!

And we're all about bringing 4K projection to the masses.
 
sweet. i'll talk with ya about what we're doing here and hopefully i can meet up with y'all sometime, somewhere!
 
falloutboy on their 11 part episodic music-video storytelling "young blood chronicles" (@ 1:00)
it's only got 65million views...

on general thematic points, especially getting their asses kicked

also, on their punkrock accompaniment to their new album w/ ryan adams

it would be hard to continue a story such as this if we were just going around and winning and beating everybody... [with] dark narrative the characters you're most interested in are usually going through a lot of turmoil and a lot of terrifying things along the way
Click to expand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8patZ8mEMM
 
Now that I finally have a computer that can copy links, looks like I missed the whole class. Still getting emails, though, so hopefully there will be another chance up and coming.


My work
http://thestarvingdramaturge.wordpress.com/
 
Good article and insight.

Traditionally in our communities the reason for telling stories was to inculcate the next generation of the tenets which binds the behaviours of the society/community, and thus creating culture. And because we live in a wintery climate when there's less opportunity to be productive outdoors, we stayed inside by the fire, kept warm, procreated, and told stories...and they had to be good, otherwise the moral would be forgotten.

Interesting how the good films (prestige/award-winners) are shown in the late fall and winter, whereas the bloated blockbusters happen in spring & summer? Of course The Force Awakens is just about to be the most successful movie of all time and it came out a few weeks ago, but what is interesting about Star Wars was Lucas set out to make a timeless western...set in outer space. The Hero's Journey never ends...
 
paulherrin said:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/into-the-woods-excerpt/421566
Click to expand...

Great article.

I've avoided this thread because I did not want other people's beliefs and formulas to worm their way into my intuitive way of writing. This article explains how there is nothing wrong with the way I write and even shows how I may follow certain formulas without being aware of them (I haven't looked at my story's structures... only if they are interesting and easily understood.)

It may turn out this is universal within the genetic "soul" science has been unable to pinpoint.

By making a case for both the way I write and the formulaic writers, I think the article covers storytelling in its many facets very well.
 
for me telling stories to one another is an awesome form of communication building metaphysical connections.

when we share our experiences and understand where we're all coming from, we can better understand where we wish to go from here.

structure (sometimes formulaic) i think is always a starting point;
sometimes it's really helpful to attempt an unawareness of it in order to explore new ideas and understandings...
otherwise the focus always centers around characters moving through storytime...
beyond that is the viscereal sensations happening before, during, and after a story experience
[the audience is as important (if not more) than the storyteller(s)]

it's always almost 2 awesome to tell how much a certain story may impact future generations, but it's always grounded in the situation at hand.
 
Thanks for sharing Paul. Great stuff!
 
Elsie N said:
Great article.

I've avoided this thread because I did not want other people's beliefs and formulas to worm their way into my intuitive way of writing. This article explains how there is nothing wrong with the way I write and even shows how I may follow certain formulas without being aware of them (I haven't looked at my story's structures... only if they are interesting and easily understood.)

It may turn out this is universal within the genetic "soul" science has been unable to pinpoint.

By making a case for both the way I write and the formulaic writers, I think the article covers storytelling in its many facets very well.
Click to expand...

This is why so many writers fail, not because they didn't have the stories, but because all the books about the process has destroyed a generation of writers that wanted a quickfix to understand storytelling. As you, and they mention, the core of storytelling is something we all know. When I was younger I started writing screenplays after I catched onto how to write a screenplay in pure technical terms. I didn't have anything more than a quick look at dramatic structure before I started and I didn't do plot outlines or any of the usual techniques, I just wrote it as I went along, like I was watching a movie in my head and made it up as I went along. They sure needs a heavy rewrite, but the surprising thing was that the structure was there when I looked at it today. It had all the beats and act breaks, even though I didn't know much about it back then.

After that I went on reading a lot of books on structure, "Story", "Save the Cat" and such, but all I got from it was writers block. It has taken me close to ten years to get back to that "passion" for the story I write, because all I had was all these rules blocking me in the process. "I can't do that, because it must be like this" etc.

I am however really certain about story structure being something that has to be learned. But the means to which we learn are wrong. They need to grow together with the passion for stories, otherwise it balances over too heavily on structure-terms. I've never seen any good writer who don't know or understand structure. Even when they try to break those kind of principles, they know "how" to break them because they know what they are breaking. The best way to learn, as almost any experienced writer will tell everyone; is to not focus on learning structure through a list of principles, but by just reading those damn screenplays and theatre plays. Read them, look at the movie, read them again. Read the first draft, the shooting script and then watch the movie again, watch a scene, break down that scene, read again and so on. It's all there, if it's a good movie.

But the main thing that I think underlines any writing in any form for pure storytelling is really simple: Character change through action and reaction.
That's it, if you have that with you when writing or finding stories, you have enough really. The rest comes easy, like... if you want to find out how the character change, just think about it as being the biggest change in this persons life.
This is why it's so hard to write TV or sequels. If there's a huge change in the first season or film, how do you continue if that change was the characters biggest moment in their lives? A person cannot change over and over and over.
This is why "Breaking Bad" mastered the art of TV writing. They made a five seasons long change that felt real. They didn't "mega-change" Walter through one season, but instead made each season as an "act", one action and a reaction, then a step up the ladder on that overall change. If you want to learn TV writing, there's no better series to watch than Breaking Bad, I guarantee.

If your characters don't change, it's very likely that people won't be able to stay awake through the story.
 
in the beginning of storytelling, the author & finisher took some of the kids legos so they could go on a quest to find the other side and put them back together again in order to build a better aviary sanctuary for the future...

8513061417_fa47eef7a1_b.jpg
 
Christoffer Glans said:
This is why so many writers fail, not because they didn't have the stories, but because all the books about the process has destroyed a generation of writers that wanted a quickfix to understand storytelling. As you, and they mention, the core of storytelling is something we all know. When I was younger I started writing screenplays after I catched onto how to write a screenplay in pure technical terms. I didn't have anything more than a quick look at dramatic structure before I started and I didn't do plot outlines or any of the usual techniques, I just wrote it as I went along, like I was watching a movie in my head and made it up as I went along. They sure needs a heavy rewrite, but the surprising thing was that the structure was there when I looked at it today. It had all the beats and act breaks, even though I didn't know much about it back then.

After that I went on reading a lot of books on structure, "Story", "Save the Cat" and such, but all I got from it was writers block. It has taken me close to ten years to get back to that "passion" for the story I write, because all I had was all these rules blocking me in the process. "I can't do that, because it must be like this" etc.

I am however really certain about story structure being something that has to be learned. But the means to which we learn are wrong. They need to grow together with the passion for stories, otherwise it balances over too heavily on structure-terms. I've never seen any good writer who don't know or understand structure. Even when they try to break those kind of principles, they know "how" to break them because they know what they are breaking. The best way to learn, as almost any experienced writer will tell everyone; is to not focus on learning structure through a list of principles, but by just reading those damn screenplays and theatre plays. Read them, look at the movie, read them again. Read the first draft, the shooting script and then watch the movie again, watch a scene, break down that scene, read again and so on. It's all there, if it's a good movie.

But the main thing that I think underlines any writing in any form for pure storytelling is really simple: Character change through action and reaction.
That's it, if you have that with you when writing or finding stories, you have enough really. The rest comes easy, like... if you want to find out how the character change, just think about it as being the biggest change in this persons life.
This is why it's so hard to write TV or sequels. If there's a huge change in the first season or film, how do you continue if that change was the characters biggest moment in their lives? A person cannot change over and over and over.
This is why "Breaking Bad" mastered the art of TV writing. They made a five seasons long change that felt real. They didn't "mega-change" Walter through one season, but instead made each season as an "act", one action and a reaction, then a step up the ladder on that overall change. If you want to learn TV writing, there's no better series to watch than Breaking Bad, I guarantee.

If your characters don't change, it's very likely that people won't be able to stay awake through the story.
Click to expand...

Some of what you say parallels what UCLA Professor Richard Walter says in this You Tube video, titled "It's All About Story and Nothing Else."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top